Deadly Interest

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 Julie Hyzy

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may
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form or by any mechanical means without permission in writing from
the author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,
and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, or to any businesses or locale, is purely coincidental.

Dedication

For Paul,

who survived Susie, Sni-a-bar, and much,
much more.

Love you, Bruds.

Acknowledgments

A very special thanks to my patient family,
who still insist they enjoy having me around, even though I
sequester myself at my keyboard for hours and then fall asleep in
front of the TV.

“
Thank God,” I said under
my breath when the garage door lurched upward, responding to a
quick press of the remote. The opener had been misbehaving
recently, often taking half-a-dozen tries before activating. It
needed new batteries—but I didn’t have time to deal with that
tonight.

Shutting off the engine, I gathered my purse
and reached up to my visor, hitting the control button again.

Nothing.

I made a face, and pressed again, this time
holding for an extra second—hoping for a strong enough signal to
catch. Still nothing.

“
Fine,” I said aloud,
getting out and slamming the car door shut. I started around the
front of the Escort, when I heard someone calling my name over the
steady drizzle.

“
Alex?” The high-pitched
voice held a touch of urgency.

I peered out into the rainy night. One of my
neighbors, Mrs. Vicks, held a folded newspaper over her wiry
carrot-red hair, shuffling along the alley in what, for her, had to
be warp speed.

A quick glance at my watch told me it was
ten minutes before six. I needed to rush inside, make myself look
gorgeous—as much as that was possible—and be out the door by
six-thirty for the first newsmagazine awards dinner where I was a
contender for the prestigious Davis Prize.

Mrs. Vicks’ expression was at once eager and
apologetic, the wrinkles in her face so dense they formed
crisscross patterns on her cheeks, pink with exertion. She had on a
dark plaid raincoat, its silver snaps clipped shut from hemline to
neck. Beneath it, she wore shiny sweat pants gathered over her
extra-wide gym shoes that splashed up shots of water as she made
her way toward me.

“
Made it,” she said, with
obvious relief, ducking into my garage to get out of the rain. “I’m
locked out.” She shook out the newspaper, sending sprays of water
across my car’s hood, and I got a mouthful of her
cologne.

I was about to explain about my rush, but
she interrupted. “Diana must’ve locked the front door. She was
sitting at the kitchen table when I got home from work, and I
thought she was staying in. I was sure of it. I told her I was
going to be right back. I don’t know what goes on in that girl’s
head, sometimes.”

Mrs. Vicks’ roommate, Diana, had been a
troubled teen, and was now a troubled young woman. I knew Diana
well enough to say hello and exchange quick pleasantries. She
didn’t strike me as vindictive, or the type to purposely lock
Evelyn Vicks out of her home for laughs, but I could believe she
was sufficiently scatter-brained to forget about her landlady when
leaving the house.

Digging out my cell phone, I offered to call
my Aunt Lena who lived just a few houses down. “She has a key,
right?” I asked, my voice a mite too hopeful.

Mrs. Vicks inspected her gym shoes. They
were dappled with dark spots and she tried cleaning them by rubbing
the tops against the fabric of her pant legs. She had difficulty
maintaining balance and latched onto my forearm for support,
holding me frozen in her iron grip. “Nah,” she said, not looking
up. “Lena and Moose aren’t home. I tried them first. Nobody else is
around.” She finished her futile effort and finally glanced up at
me with a hopeful smile. “Well, nobody who’s agile enough to get
through my back window.”

She let go as I put my phone back in my
purse. I glanced at my watch. Five minutes had ticked by
already.

“
Mrs. Vicks, I’d love to
help you out, but I’m really in a hurry tonight. How about you stay
at my house till my aunt and uncle or Diana get back?”

She was shaking her head even before I
finished talking. “I put a pork roast in the oven,” she said. “Told
you I wasn’t going to be gone long. I just walked down to the strip
mall to pick up my prescription. Half hour, tops.” Her eyes widened
as she proffered a stapled-shut white bag that had been tucked
under her arm. She held it out with a look of determination, as
though I doubted her. “I’m afraid it’s going to dry out—you know
pork does that real quick—or, heaven forbid, it could start a fire
if it’s in there long enough.”

The last time I helped her get back into her
house, it’d been a Saturday morning in the fall, and I’d been out
trimming my yews and raking maple leaves. Suitably dressed in jeans
and a T-shirt, I’d been perfectly willing to prop a ladder up to
her back porch windows and shimmy inside.

Tonight was one of those almost-warm March
evenings, the protracted rain pulling fresh growth smells from the
new-green ground. Having shucked my lined coat because it was too
heavy, I had on a brand-new navy blue skirt suit with matching
pumps. There was no way I could see myself climbing up a wet ladder
in this miserable weather. Not to mention that the clock was
ticking. Even if I ran into my house this minute I’d never get my
hair done in time.

“
Really, Mrs. Vicks, I
have to be somewhere by seven and I still have to get
ready.”

She scrutinized me. “You look fine, honey.
You always do.” Her eyes raked me up and down and she sighed, as
though for her lost youth. “Your aunt told me about this dinner
thing you’re going to. Isn’t this the one where you’re up against
the jerk who cheated your station out of a big story?”

I winced. “Something like that.”

Mrs. Vicks pursed her lips and wrinkled her
nose. “Well, I hope you beat him good,” she said. Her glance slid
down the alley toward her house, four garages away. “I mean,” she
said, “your aunt told us all about how that TV big-shot fellow got
all the credit for the work you did. You’re not dating him anymore,
are you?”

I scratched my eyebrow. Mrs. Vicks could
talk all night.

“
Wait here,” I said,
dumping my purse onto my car’s passenger seat. I pulled on my coat
in an effort to protect my suit, and hoisted my extension ladder
from its hangers on the garage wall. This house and all its finery
had belonged to my parents. Now safely ensconced in a retirement
village in Arkansas, they’d seen fit to leave the whole kit and
kaboodle to me. Mostly it came in handy. Tonight I wished I lived
in a north shore condominium with a doorman named Joe.

The rain had let up, but Mrs. Vicks,
determined to accompany me in my rescue quest, tottered alongside,
holding the folded newspaper over me. Since she was at least four
inches shorter than my own five-foot-six, the newspaper kept
whapping against my head as we walked through the narrow passage
that separated her garage from my aunt and uncle’s.

“
How are your parents
enjoying the leisurely life?” she asked. Not waiting for my answer,
she continued. “And your sister, Lucy. What about her? I can’t help
but feel—don’t tell your folks this—that the poor girl is going to
be lost in that retarded institution.”

Her mouth made a clucking sound, and she
watched her feet, rather than the hand carrying the newspaper. I
suffered another whack, and cringed at the word “retarded.” If Lucy
had been here, she’d have been hurt.

“
Sorry,” she said, meaning
the hit in the head, and not the terminology. “It’s just that poor
Lucy doesn’t seem like she should belong there. Not that she isn’t
‘special.’” Evelyn Vicks glanced up at me then. “Of course, she
isn’t exactly normal, either.”

“
She’s doing great. Loves
it.” My tone was abrupt.

Mrs. Vicks shuffled as fast as she could to
keep up with me, but all I wanted was to get in, get out and get
moving. I heard her heave a long sigh. “Lucy is such a sweet girl.
I miss her.”

A moment’s pang. I missed her too.

Once in the small yard, I headed toward the
back porch. Not watching what I was doing, I inadvertently skimmed
the top rungs of the ladder against her massive fir tree. The
bouncy branches slingshot back at me, showering my head with
rainwater and my last chance for decent hair washed away.

“
It’s okay,” I said,
pushing away her hand, trying hard not to let my impatience show. I
raised the ladder till it bonked against the back of the house,
next to the right-hand window. Things would have been easier if
Mrs. Vicks hadn’t outfitted all her basement windows with
glass-block panes.

I tried not to think about balancing on wet
metal rungs as I stripped off my shoes. “You’re sure this back
window’s unlocked?” I asked.

“
I know it is,” she said,
holding the paper over herself again. “I had it open this afternoon
for a bit, when I got home from work.”

I sighed, handed my heels to Mrs. Vicks, and
started up.

I was only three rungs up when a bright
crack of lightning, just north of us, shot me with renewed urgency.
Standing on a metal ladder, the ridged rungs digging into the soles
of my pantyhose-covered feet in the middle of a storm was not how
I’d planned tonight’s festivities.

As if to berate me for my foolhardiness, the
sky rumbled, then boomed, shaking the already unsteady ladder.
Above me, a trio of windows awaited, set into the vinyl-sided back
porch add-on. All large and double-hung, I knew from experience
that even from the inside, these heavy panes were often hard to
lift.

“
I’ve got you,” Mrs. Vicks
said.

I glanced down long enough to see her eager,
upturned face, squinting against the steadily growing drizzle. One
hand was wrapped around her prescription bag and newspaper, her
fingers tucked into the backs of my shoes, the other hand gripped
the ladder.

Three more upward steps and I was in
position. My left hand grabbed the white-painted wood frame of the
window and I peered over the center to verify that the lock was
unlatched.

She was right about that, thank
goodness.

The wind whipped my skirt around, shooting
blasts of damp air up my butt and making me feel for a moment like
Marilyn Monroe must have over that subway vent, except cold. I
tucked the excess fabric between my thighs in front, and tried to
hoist the window upward.

No luck.

I heard the oncoming torrent before I felt
it. Like the sound of a thousand spirits shushing at once, it moved
from the north like a wave. Seconds later, we were drenched.

Grimacing, I dug my fingers between the
upper and lower panes, and pushed the bottom half of the window
upward with all my might.

It gave, about a half-inch.

Encouraged, I pushed again, till there was
enough room underneath the frame to sneak my fingers in to get the
leverage I needed to open the window full wide. The wrenching noise
led me to believe that it’d gone off its track, and I felt like I’d
broken something. A half-second later I realized I had—one of my
brand-new acrylic fingernails. Getting them done on the way home
from work was what made me run late in the first place. They’d been
gorgeous—long and French-tipped. Now the middle fingernail on my
right hand was short and ragged. I clenched my eyes shut, less in
pain than in aggravation, but at that point, all I could think of
was how fast I could straddle the windowsill and heave myself
inside.

As I made it through, I heard Mrs. Vicks
shout in glee that she’d meet me around the front door.

She was gone before I could argue that the
back door was closer.

I ran a hand through my wet hair and took
stock as I made my way to the front of Evelyn Vicks’ house. I
glanced at the clock in the kitchen, where the table was covered
with paperwork, and I could smell delicious heat coming off the
pork roast. The room was bright and warm, plastic yellow tiles
framed with a black border about three-quarters of the way up the
wall,